After sifting through about a million different online profiles, I start to wonder if my standards are set too high. I’ve got an account on Match because my friends tell me that my standards were set too low from having surfed the free personals listings on Craigslist. After going out with many a mardy bum date and recently escaping a failed long-term relationship, my gal pals told me that I should quit with the Craigslist and actually invest some money into a dating account. After all, the people on there are paying to find someone, which I guess means that they can at least afford an account?

Well, the BFF’s personally approved my profile, which of course is quite verbose and somewhat scary to read for the male looking to casually date. (Monogamy? A serious relationship? What?) But at the same time it’s good because it shows people who I am, who I’m ideally looking for, and weeds out the deadbeats who aren’t up for the challenge that is me. And, boy, am I a challenge. Especially as of late. LoL

*ahem*

Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. Hello, everyone! My name is Kristine. I’m looking for love…hopefully in all the right places. As I’ve already exhausted the bar scene, school, church, & I don’t believe in office dating (too complicated!), I decided that I should start looking for love online. I’ve always been a person who’s been open to new types of things ever since a pivotal (and somewhat depressing) religion class in high school told me that I could basically marry hundreds of different people out in the world and the only thing limiting me was location. As the Internet has no bounds, I decided that I’d find those hundreds of people and pick the best-looking one. (j/k…I’m not that superficial!)

But last night, I had this amazing phone conversation with this guy who was pretty much exactly like me. I went to look back at his profile to commit it to my memory bank when I saw that he was looking for someone either “Agnostic, Atheist, Spiritual but Not Religious.” I consider myself to be in the last category, but I was born into and raised in a Catholic household. However, when I got to college, I started discovering other religions and stopped going to church. I rediscovered my spirituality on a more personal level and *badabing badaboom* here I am now. So while I no longer believe in organized religion per se, and I am totally down with people believing in what they want to believe, I wonder if this could ever really work in the long-run. Would he constantly nitpick at me for believing in a Higher Power if he didn’t believe in one himself? What if I rediscovered my faith roots and decided to start practicing my Catholic religion again? What if I wanted to get married in the Catholic church in order to appease my aging parents (who are really gung-ho about it) and my partner wouldn’t convert? What if I wanted to raise my kids with different world religions so they could pick and choose their set of beliefs instead of being bound by one sect of faith and he wasn’t cool with religion at all?

That’s when I had to tell myself to slow down. I’m not marrying this guy yet. Let’s just take it slow and see how it goes. But it’s a hot button issue that I’d need to bring up with him later…like, oh say, Date # 5.

But this incident also led me to think about a failed set-up date and how important it is to me that my lifestyle also matches that of my would-be partner. Now, I’ve been a little bit of a lush as of late. I won’t lie. I enjoy my Long Islands (with cherry garnish, please!). And I have this problem with my cell phone and drunk-dialing and drunk-texting random people. *sigh* I should have already learned after years and years of this that having my phone near me while inebriated is never good, but old dogs don’t seem to learn new tricks.

Well, apparently, non-thinking Kristine went and drunk-dialed this one guy off Match. We had set up a date for later in the week. After stupidly handing off the phone to my also drunk friends and have them say some random things to him (Why did you cut your hair? Kristine likes long hair! Don’t kidnap her! Do we need to equip her with LoJack? Why do you laugh a lot? You sound a little too happy!), he was sufficiently creeped out to tell me that we sounded drunk. And he doesn’t drink anymore as he used to be too into the drinking and drugs since he was 14 (which made my then incoherent mind explode and feel really horrible), and he had a gut feeling that we wouldn’t exactly get along as I sounded like I liked to have too much fun and he was recently clean. Dating set-back! Haven’t even met and a date has already been cancelled…though I can’t really blame him after those antics. And I mean, gosh, how could I have known that he had previously been an alcoholic unless you verbally state that in your profile? But it made me realize that I needed to find someone who enjoys a cocktail or two (well, drinking within your limits) so that we could go to sports bars and get a bit rowdy when the Pacquaio fights were on. And how similar lifestyles are really important in the long haul, as are similar values and even personalities to an extent (though some would argue that personalities need to be complementary which is a whole other point of discussion in itself).

But all of these incidents got me thinking back on what a theology teacher in college told me:

“You marry the person, not whose traits you love the most, but whose flaws you hate the least.”

And I guess that’s true, in a way. I just have to think about which flaws in my partner I can live with and which attributes I consider essential in order for our relationship to work. Compound this with the “ditto goes for vice versa” effect and we’re talking about a 1% chance that I’ll ever find someone out there. LoL But I consider myself an optimist, so I’m sure I’ll find him even if it takes me ’til I’m 64! *cue Beatles music*

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2 thoughts on “What Means the World To You?”

My boyfriend of 6 months broke up with me about a month ago.. we had a great relationship.. or so I thought. I am a big picture person.. if I can say that 90% of the time I’m happy in a relationship that’s really all that matters to me. I loved him (actually still do unfortunately grr).. and it’s a real honest to goodness unconditional love. Everyone has their issues and it’s really just a matter of whether you can live with those issues or not.

He, unfortunately, is a details person. So instead of looking at the overall quality of our relationship he would break it down and focus on the negatives (of which there really weren’t very many) and when you focus on the negative you lose sight of the many positives. I had coffee with one of his friends yesterday and it was very interesting. She said she told him that she thought he was making a mistake breaking up with me and that he was gonna regret it in the end. She said she’s never seen him as happy as when he was with me and that she was shocked when he told her he ended it because every time she asked how things were going he’d say “great!”.

I guess what it shows is that if you spend a lot of time dissecting things you’re bound to find *something* wrong.. so I think your theology teacher is right. You’re not gonna find someone who has everything little thing that you want.. but if you can find someone who’s big picture makes you happy that’s really all you can ask for.

If you’re constantly looking for flaws in a piece of art you lose what makes it beautiful. That’s kind of how I feel about relationships.

Hey Kristine! I’m kind of new to the whole on-line dating world too (I checked out Match, but decided to go with People2People.com instead), and I can relate to a lot of what you’re saying. I’m still reminding myself that I need to focus more on what the people say about themselves in their profiles, and not read so much into those pre-packaged question-and-answer bullet-points.

I look forward to reading more of your posts, and here’s hoping you find your love!